


it's a sickness, a manic weakness

by theyellowumbrella



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: F/F, Very fluffy, Wedding Talk, oof, sickeningly so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 08:23:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16193741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theyellowumbrella/pseuds/theyellowumbrella
Summary: Vanessa and Charity share a moment at Robert and Aaron's wedding.





	it's a sickness, a manic weakness

**Author's Note:**

> bet you thought you'd seen the last of me

Charity doesn’t like weddings much, hard as it might be to believe. She’s had so many of them now that they leave a funny taste in her mouth, make her stomach tighten uncomfortably. Maybe she’s just a pessimist, all signs of optimism for the future stamped out by all of the men who promised to love and care for her forever only to throw that down the drain the second things got tough, but maybe she’s just being realistic. That’s always been her specialty, after all.

Vanessa’s the opposite; she thrives off of them. She loves the buzz, the feeling of love in the air - she doesn’t shut up about Robert and Aaron’s for weeks leading up to it. Charity swears sometimes that Vanessa’s forgotten that Charity’s the Dingle, not herself; that she should be the one getting so excited for her cousin’s wedding. She makes a few snarky comments at first, rolls her eyes whenever Vanessa squeals in excitement upon hearing any of their upcoming plans, but secretly she’s rather pleased that Vanessa’s so excited. It makes her feel all warm and gooey inside, uncomfortably so, that Vanessa embraces the idea of a wedding so much.

For once in her life, it gives her hope for the future.

By the time the wedding finally rolls about, between her family and Vanessa it’s all she’s heard about for weeks. She thinks that on Vanessa’s part it might be a bit to do with trying to distract her — if she only gives her time to think about the colour of Robert’s tie and Seb’s little suit and whether or not they’re going to match their dresses or if Charity’s even going to _wear_ a dress, she won’t have time to dwell on the trial and Ryan and his siblings and everything that she’s expected to put behind her now that things have been resolved. It’s very sweet, in her own Vanessa kind of way.

She rushes about the morning of, far too excited about the little matching suits she’d spent forever picking out for Moses and Johnny. She fusses about them and Noah, faffing about with the red tie she’d picked out for him, trying to make sure it’s tied perfectly so that he looks just right. The two of them stand in the kitchen watching YouTube tutorials for a good ten minutes, more heated words exchanged between them than is probably necessary for something as simple as tieing a tie.

Charity watches on from the side in amusement as she gets herself ready. There’s something in the air, something that makes her feel so light and happy about how easily Vanessa’s slotted herself into her life, about how it feels like she was always there. It makes her feel like she’s floating — walking on water, maybe, like that Bible story that her dad always read her when she was young enough not to be a disappointment in his eyes.

For the first time in a long, long time, Charity feels that sparkle again. Or, maybe sparkle’s not the word, but … innocence. She feels young again, like she’s got the world at her feet. Like nothing will ever go wrong if she just stays there in that moment with Vanessa and her boys, frozen in time forever. She knows that’s not the case, knows that as soon as she leaves the comfort of these four walls she’ll be hit with the cold hard truth of her life — of Bails, of Ryan, of the family that don’t care enough to even ask how she’s doing, never mind give her any real support — but for a minute, she lets herself get caught up in the fantasy of it all.

She’s snapped out of her daydreams by the sound of Moses’ shrieking. She rolls her eyes in a sort of fond annoyance when she sees him and Johnny wrestling on the ground, and sets the eyeshadow palette in hand down on the counter beside her in order to separate the two squealing boys.

The wedding itself is nice, or at least the setup is. The two men are stood at the altar, taking turns with their vows (self-written, according to Vanessa’s whisper in her ear, like she cares). There’s fairy lights draped around the tent, giving off an almost innocent vibe. It makes her smile, the thought of Robert and Aaron ever being seen as innocent. Vanessa turns to her and a little smile of her own shifts onto her face.

“What you smiling at?” she asks.

Charity turns to face Vanessa, and something inside of her just clicks. She looks gorgeous, all softness and light under the glow of the sun. She’s smiling away so genuinely, like she’s never known sadness or hurt. And Charity knows that’s not the case, knows that Vanessa’s went through things that make her chest tighten when she thinks of them, knows that she herself has put Vanessa through the unimaginable, but in that moment it's so easy to believe, and she wants to so, so badly.

“Nothing,” Charity says, and if her voice gets stuck in the back of her throat with the sheer weight of her love for this ridiculous woman, Vanessa doesn’t mention it. “Just thinking…” She looks up at Robert and Aaron, sees the way the tears glint in Aaron’s eyes as he stumbles over his vows, and all of a sudden, the childlike part of her that aches for a big white wedding and a picket fence and a happily ever after, is beating away at her chest so fast that she’s scared it’s going to burst.

“Thinking what?” Vanessa prompts, her voice soft.

Charity looks past Vanessa briefly to the sight of their three boys sat watching the wedding intently — Noah in the middle, Johnny and Moses plonked on either side of him — and, for once in their lives, quietly. She looks back to Vanessa, sitting waiting like she has all the time in the world to hear Charity’s answer, like she isn’t meant to be listening to Robert spitting out his vows right now.

“Just thinking how that’ll be us one day,” she says. Her voice is quiet, trembling, but she’s more sure of it than she has been about anything in a long time.

Vanessa looks taken aback, but she manages to mask any bewilderment fairly quickly, as if she’s scared that it’ll freak Charity out. She reaches over and takes her hand, squeezing tightly as if to convey a message, an _I can’t wait,_ before she finally turns her attention back to the wedding.

Charity finds herself quite glad that Vanessa didn’t reply, not verbally anyway — she thinks it might have been too much, too overwhelming. She’s just glad that they’re on the same wavelength now, that she feels safe enough within their relationship to understand that Vanessa’s silence is nothing more than something set in place to keep her comfortable.

Before, it used to panic her — the silence, that is. At the beginning, when they were still trying to get used to each other’s company, to actually enjoying being together, Vanessa would often say so much, _too_ much, and it would jumble things in Charity’s head. And then, after a while, she wouldn’t say enough — would bite her tongue, leave Charity be.

For a while, that was too much, too. Her whole life, silence meant bad, silence meant punishment, silence meant _you have done something wrong and now you’re paying._ Peace and quiet wasn’t a concept that existed in her house, because with quiet came war.

But they found a good middle, eventually. Vanessa taught Charity that silence could be comfortable, peaceful, everything under the rainbow if they wanted it to be, and Charity tried her best to teach Vanessa the signs of when she should say something and when she shouldn’t.

Everything about it — being in a healthy relationship, finally feeling safe, _communication_ — is new to Charity, and on one hand, it’s absolutely fucking terrifying, but on the other, she can’t think of literally anything in the world she’d give it up for.

**Author's Note:**

> i'll be real this was meant to have a whole other part to it where they were in the cellar and it was gonna be so cute but i never wrote it and now it's the day of the wedding so . we're stuck with this :/ but if it feels like it finishes a lil abruptly, that's why loool. i haven't proofread it in days so sorry for any errors.
> 
> talk to me on tumblr noahdingles.tumblr.com or on twitter @charitydingles


End file.
